US shows Iranian arms found in Iraq

By Reuters

Financial Times

Published: February 12 2007

BAGHDAD, Feb 11 (Reuters) - US-led forces in
Iraq presented on Sunday what officials said was “a growing body” of evidence of
Iranian weapons being used to kill their soldiers, as US anger at Tehran’s
alleged involvement in the war rises.

A senior defence official from the US-led Multinational Force in Baghdad told
a briefing that 170 coalition forces had been killed by Iranian-made roadside
bombs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) that he said were smuggled
into Iraq.

Officials showed journalists fragments of what they said were
Iranian-manufactured weapons, including one part of an EFP - which is strong
enough to penetrate the armour of an Abrams tank - and tail fins from 81 mm and
60 mm mortar bombs.

“The weapons had characteristics unique to being manfactured in Iran ... Iran
is the only country in the region that produces these weapons,” the senior
defence official said in Baghdad, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

The officials said they were showing the evidence now out of concern about
the “vast increase” in sophisticated weapons used by Iraqi militants against US
forces in 2006.

Washington has long accused Iran of fanning violence in Iraq by giving
sophisticated bomb-making technology, money and training to militant Shia
groups, some of which have links with Iraq’s Shia-led government.

“We assess these activities are coming from the highest levels of the Iranian
government,” said one of the officials, a senior defence analyst, referring to
the training and funding of Iraqi militant groups.

Tehran denies the charge and blames American soldiers for the violence and
for inflaming tensions between Shias and once-dominant Sunni Arabs.

“We are a friend of Iraq. We have common culture and history, and Iraq’s
stability, security and integrity, means Iran’s stability, security and
integrity,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in Tehran on
Sunday, marking the 28th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“You send a message to us asking for help to leave Iraq, but you didn’t
listen to our advice and instead arrested a few people,” he said referring to
the seizure by US forces of a number of Iranians in Iraq over the past two
months.

The briefing by the defence official and other coalition officers comes amid
rising US-Iranian tension over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The officials also said Iran had several surrogate groups operating in Iraq
using the EFPs, among them rogue elements of radical Shia cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, to whom Iran was supplying weapons and guerrilla warfare
training.

The Pentagon calls the Mehdi Army the biggest threat to peace in Iraq. Al
Sadr, who is a key political ally of the Iraqi prime minister, denies any
involvement in attacks to troops.

Washington, which says Tehran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb under the
cover of a nuclear energy programme, has repeatedly told Iran not to fuel
violence in Iraq.

Two US aircraft carrier groups have been stationed in the Gulf as a warning
to Iran, although President George W. Bush has said he has no intention of
invading the Islamic Republic.

But some war critics say the Bush administration’s language on Iran echoes
comments made leading up to the 2003 invasion.

The main justification given for the invasion was that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction, but the weapons were never found and Washington later blamed
faulty intelligence.

Given the criticism that still dogs Bush over the handling of that
intelligence, US officials have stepped more carefully in preparing their
dossier to support their claims that Iran is interfering in Iraq.

Officials do not want to be accused of either overstating the case against
Iran or presenting information that appears poorly sourced.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in Baghdad and Edmund Blair in
Tehran)